September, Club fair, OVRO, big boy bed and nausea

I've been a bad mommy blogger.

I've been a bad mommy blogger.

I've been a bad mommy blogger.

In my defense, this pregnancy has been kicking my butt. My nausea went from bad to worse and I took many days off of work, spent 3 weeks dry heaving, exhausted and on a diet of Ensure, peppermint tea and fruit. The worst of it has ended as I move into my 2nd trimester. This one has been WAY worse than Bronson's pregnancy. I don't like chocolate. I just drink peppermint tea, eat fresh fruit and crackers and every now and then crave Indian food. (Of course the most expensive of all take-outs)


We have had a nice September otherwise. Grandma Portage came to visit for a week, and she took care of Bronson while I slept and slept and slept. For Bronson's birthday Grandma and Grandpa Portage bought him a toddler bed. He loves it. I wasn't sure if we should get him one, but when he saw it at IKEA he got so excited that I caved. He slept the night through in it immediately and has been doing great ever since. He comes to wake us up around 6am now, whereas before he'd "sleep" until about 8, but Matt can usually get him back in to bed for another 45 minutes or so. I'm impressed that he's sleeping 11 hour nights and don't usually try to put him back to bed. Which is probably why he comes to my side first in the mornings.

Last Wednesday through Saturday we were up in Owens Valley at OVRO (the Radio Observatory there). We had a great time. Matthew worked long days and met with some collaborators over from England. Bronson and I enjoyed the park in Bishop and fed the ducks there in the mornings. We got fresh sandwiches from Erik Schat's Bakery for lunch, napped in the afternoon and then swam at the hot springs later in the day. One night Bronson and I took a date to a local Steak and Spaghetti restaurant, it was nice. The last night we attended a retirement function for one of the OVRO Engineers who'd worked 40+ years. It was a great dinner and nice to see friends.

My favorite part of OVRO is the cabin, it's the closest to a house we get:) And the views from the cabin are amazing. It's so quiet there and so many stars. Bronson's favorite part is the satellite tv, so he got to watch alot of tv shows. He even started responding to them, dancing with them, copying words and answering them when they ask the viewer questions. It eased the guilt of allowing him so much tv time.

We came back early on Saturday in order to attend the Caltech club fair and carnival - it is my favorite Caltech event of the year. All the clubs have booths, there are carnival games and club demonstrations. Free carnival food, a huge water slide, bouncy castle, etc. There's a free bar-b-q dinner, tons of prizes, a movie screened outdoors in the dark and an awesome fireworks display. All right across the road from us on campus!


We got home, changed and headed over expecting to stay awhile, then come home, then go back for dinner. Instead we stayed until the end of the fireworks, 4 hours straight. B was tired after the 5 hour drive, so he was pretty easy to keep track of. We set down our blanket, friends gathered round and we watched the performances, ate dinner and chatted. Bronson got up and danced during the dance performances, he was so excited to dance! He was totally in to it. We've been watching High School Musical, which he loves and I think that's where he gets it from.

Anyhow, the fireworks were amazing, they shoot them in time to music, and they are right overhead, off the roofs of the buildings surrounding us. It was a great afternoon/evening and B totally crashed when we got home.

Anyhow, nothing too new coming up. Trying, sort of trying, to potty train Bronson, then the final step will be getting rid of soothers, especially before baby gets here, or there might be some issues. But we've got another 6 months before then. Grandma Val is coming for 2 weeks Oct 8th to help me with cooking, cleaning, babysitting, right?... or for a visit anyways. :)

Bronson on Chilean Independence day

I've been crafting away, I've made our Halloween door hanger, and now I'm working on an ambitious '12 days of Christmas' wall quilt. Doing the embroidery on the pears. You'll see what I mean in a few weeks (or months?) Bought most of the supplies for our Halloween costumes. Yup, September! But I'm putting off making those because I have to procrastinate on something.

In Matthew news, his 2 telescopes have now finally been transported and installed at OVRO. He is now working on the electronics for his C-BASS device. He has been back and forth to Stanford and will be back and forth again and again to meet with collaborators and attend workshops related to the other project he's on, the 40M telescope project. To help keep these straight: The 40M project is on the big telescope at OVRO, is currently collecting data and is in collaboration with Stanford and Germany, he is 1 of 3 grad students on this, he used to be the only one but he is working towards having a smaller role in this to give him more time for the other. The C-BASS project is 2 smaller telescopes at OVRO, is not collecting data yet, still needs a special device built for it, the entire point of it, actually, Matt is the only grad student on this one and this is in collaboration with Oxford, England, and eventually will be repeated in South Africa. C-BASS is his major project. Hope that helps to clarify his life. Oh yeah, he also reads and watches alot of "humorous" stuff on the Internet.


I end with an anecdote that I read on a friend of a friend of a friend's daddy blog. His daughter stuck a crayon up her nose and they could not get it out. So they took her to emergency and the doc came in and said "alright, before we try tweezers, here's a trick. Plug the unclogged nostril and leave the crayon nostril open, then blow in her mouth. This is how you blow a child's nose." So after a few tries, sure enough this worked. This guy is not a doctor, he's only writing about what this doc told him, and now I am paraphrasing that - so you know, disclaimer and all. But I think it's a good trick to know and could save you a lengthy ER wait someday, perhaps, hopefully you won't be in this situation and neither will I. But, you never know.